Some scholars and futurists have identified what they believe is a historic shift away from the materialistic, growth-oriented philosophies that have dominated the values and goals of Western societies since the end of the Middle Ages.

Social philosopher Henryk Skolimowski, for instance, has described what he calls the "emerging eco-philosophy of the twenty-first century." This philosophy, Skolimowski says, is environmentally and ecologically conscious, is concerned with the quality of life, is spiritually alive, and is opposed to consumerism and materialism.

Similarly, futurist Kimon Valaskakis has identified the dominant societal paradigm for the 1980s to be that of the "conserver society" (see THE FUTURIST, April 1981). Valaskakis has described several possible models of conserver societies, the purest of which he believes would correspond to E.F. Schumacher’s notion of the "frugal community."

A living example of a frugal community already exists in contemporary America. This society is no short-term utopian experiment, but is a long-established religious and ethnic subculture that has existed for more than 240 years and is currently experiencing above-average rates of population growth and geographic expansion. This society is that of the Old Order Amish, also known as the "Pennsylvania Dutch."

According to Schumacher, the hallmarks of an ecologically balanced conserver society include: self-government, community self-sufficiency, escape from fossil-fuel dependency, population decentralization, freedom from consumer-oriented education, and freedom from structural unemployment. In addition, Schumacher emphasized the importance of appropriate, or people-centered, technologies for the existence of a balanced and humane social order. These technologies are designed to serve the needs of small decentralized producers, rather than big industries; they are labor- rather than energy-intensive; they are cheap enough to be accessible to the masses; and they do not violate the human need for creativity, nor pose a serious threat to the environment.

Schumacher further argued for the "therapeutic value of real work" and for a profound sense of spirituality. Work is a joyful activity and is necessary for the well-being of man’s body and soul. Work and leisure are "complementary parts of the same living process and cannot be separated without destroying the joy of work and the bliss of leisure."

Of spirituality, Schumacher wrote, "It takes a good deal of courage to say no to the fashions and fascinations of the age and to question the presuppositions of a civilization which appears destined to conquer the whole world; the requisite strength can be derived only from deep convictions. If it were derived from nothing more than fear of the future, it would be likely to disappear at the decisive moment."

The Old Order Amish provide a living example of the "frugal community" that Schumacher outlined.

The Amish reside in 20 American states, a Canadian province, and some Latin American nations and have an estimated U.S. population of 85,000, with the vast majority belonging to "Old Order" sects.

The Old Order Amish are the most orthodox followers of the seventeenth-century Swiss Anabaptist leader, Jacob Amman. They are distinguishable from other Christian Mennonite sects by the degree of their religious conservatism, which includes the conviction that the pathway to salvation requires a strict separation between the believer and the ways of the world. For the Amish, "separation from the world" signifies a life-style of voluntary simplicity – uncomplicated by a high level of consumption, material wealth, ownership, or "advanced" technology.

Members of the Order still travel by horse and buggy, dress in black clothes similar to those of their seventeenth-century ancestors, and permit no utility company connections of any kind to their homes. Houses are typically heated by woodstoves or propane or oil space heaters, are lighted by oil or gasoline lamps, and receive their water from on-site wells whose pumps may be powered by windmills.

Agrarianism and separateness were not always foundations of the Anabaptist faith but evolved out of a history of severe persecution in Europe. Primarily because of their steadfast pacifism and refusal to bear arms in military service, the Amish were systematically tortured, murdered, and eventually expelled from one European nation after another until, today, none remain on the Continent. The majority emigrated to the United States during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, with the largest concentrations settling in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, and Holmes County, Ohio.

The Amish agree wholeheartedly with Schumacher’s belief in the "therapeutic value of real work." They equally value hard work and good craftsmanship and believe that it is both enjoyable and necessary to literally earn one’s bread by the sweat of one’s brow. People who do not find joy in physical labor may even be thought to be suffering from a mental abnormality. Because of this strong belief in the benefits of work, the Amish, like Schumacher, do not view every new labor-saving device as a blessing. Schumacher argued that economic policies should emphasize the needs of people, rather than the production of goods as an end in itself, and he once proposed that rather than being decreased by automation, work should be increased six-fold.

"Even children would be allowed to make themselves useful, even old people," said Schumacher. "At one-sixth of present-day productivity, we should be producing as much as at present. There would be six times as much time for any piece of work we chose to undertake – enough to make a really good job of it, to enjoy oneself, to produce real quality, even to make things beautiful."

Though most of the Amish have probably never heard of Schumacher, their thinking runs parallel. One of them commented that he thought it was terrible that big businesses install machines that replace workers and create unemployment and suffering. In a like vein, Schumacher wrote, "Concern with goods requires mass production, but concern with people requires production by the masses."

Although they live in separate, but extended, family units and individually own their homes and properties, the Amish are truly a communal people, as anyone who has ever watched one of their barn-raisings can attest. Because of their communal orientation, the Amish value characteristics that are often the antithesis of those valued in an urban, industrial society: Humility, modesty, willing obedience, and social conformity are regarded as cardinal virtues, whereas pride, flamboyance, individualism, and competitiveness are considered to be among the worst of human traits.

The Amish philosophy of life teaches people to live as naturally as possible and to work with the forces of nature, rather than attempting to master them. This reverence for the natural clearly manifests itself in Amish farming practices, most of which could be termed "organic" by today’s standards.

For Amish society to conform which Schumacher’s view of the ideal conserver society, it should contain each of the hallmarks of an ecologically balanced conserver society: self-government, community self-sufficiency, use of appropriate technology, escape from fossil-fuel dependency, community population decentralization, freedom from consumer-oriented education, and freedom from structural unemployment.

Self-government. While the Amish are among the most law-abiding of people – serious crime being virtually unknown in their communities – they will not hesitate to deliberately violate a law that conflicts with their religious beliefs or customs. Ultimately, the Amish follow not secular laws or national governments, but their Ordnung, unwritten rules that are locally formulated by community leaders and democratically ratified by followers. Most of an Ordnung is based on the leaders’ understandings of Scriptures and old customs, but there are marked variations from region to region in interpretations of these sources of authority.

The political leadership of Amish communities is vested in the religious leaders of church districts. These leaders attempt to lead by setting good examples in their personal lives, for the Amish abhor hypocrisy. The highest-ranking leader in a district is the bishop, who administers communions, baptisms, marriages, and excommunications. The bishop is not free to exercise his power at will, however. He must, in the case of important decisions, first obtain the vote of the district’s membership.

There are, in addition, two ministers who share administrative and preaching duties with the bishop. Although church districts may be affiliated – which permits their members to attend each other’s services – a nonconforming member can be disciplined only by the leaders of his own district. All of the Amish leaders are laymen and live very much as do their followers; they acquire their religious knowledge and political skills through firsthand experience, rather than through formal training in seminaries or universities.

Self-sufficiency. About half of the heads of Amish households are farmers; most families own at least some land. Families generally grow and preserve their own fruits and vegetables, keep chickens and honey bees, and raise livestock for meat and dairy products. Clothing, furniture, and children’s toys are often, though not always, handmade, which further reduces Amish dependency upon the large economy. Members of the Old Order, who are skilled in reclaiming, repairing, and recycling castoffs of the "throw-away society," routinely patronize thrift stores, farm auctions, and rural junkyards.

The Amish often express amazement and dismay at the "wastefulness of the English." They are especially upset by the practice of tearing down "perfectly good buildings," and they often offer to salvage buildings scheduled for demolition so that they can reuse or resell the recoverable materials. From such recycled materials, the Amish construct parts of barns, outbuildings, and even houses.

The Amish refuse to accept government agricultural subsidies or welfare payments of any kind, and they are probably the only group in the U.S. whose leaders have successfully petitioned Congress to exempt them from the Social Security system. People of the Old Order believe in taking care of their own. Thus, aged and handicapped persons are customarily cared for at home by members of their extended families, rather than being sent to nursing homes or public institutions.

The Amish avoid narrow educational and occupational specialization and thus are better prepared to perform a wide range of tasks for themselves. Almost every adult male, besides having a knowledge of farming, can lead a community meeting, preach a sermon, repair broken plumbing, or build a house. Similarly, virtually every Amish woman knows how to garden, preserve food, sew clothing, make quilts, drive a team of horses, etc.

This rejection of specialization extends to Amish agricultural practices as well. Typically, Old Order farms are broadly diversified, supporting a balanced variety of plant and animal species. If their crops are attacked by insects or damaged by adverse weather, Amish farmers are less likely to lose their entire crop than are farmers who plant monoculturally.

Nevertheless, the Amish are not completely self-sufficient or isolated from the social and economic forces of the outside world. They must, for example, sell a major portion of their agricultural commodities on regional markets; they must also borrow money – at prevailing interest rates – to finance their farming operations; and, most importantly, they must pay the same high prices to purchase land as other farmers.

Appropriate technology. One of the most important factors underlying Amish self-sufficiency is their reliance upon appropriate technologies, that is, their sustained, practical use of windpower, waterpower, horsepower, solar power (woodstoves), and human labor. Small-scale, labor-intensive technologies greatly reduce capital investment and operating costs in agriculture and help to explain how Amish farmers in Ohio, for example, can earn profits on 75 to 150 acres of land at a time when Ohio’s non-Amish farmers, who use diesel tractors and other costly modern technologies, have difficulty making money on acreages twice as large.

Escape from fossil-fuel dependency. The use of horses, organic fertilizers, and other agricultural appropriate technologies also reduces Amish dependency upon fossil fuels and permits them to operate certain types of farms at much higher levels of energy efficiency. Although the labor-intensive farming methods of the Amish are not always more efficient than conventional practices (they are less so for large grain-growing operations), and interdisciplinary university research team reported that a sample of Amish dairy farms in Pennsylvania produced a unit of milk using an average of 83% less energy than their English counterparts. Furthermore, the Amish farms actually produced more milk per acre than did the non-Amish dairy units. After reviewing their findings in the above study, the researchers conjectured that the increased inputs of human labor that would be required – if the Amish model were to be widely emulated – could benefit the overall economy, particularly if future energy shortages reduce the jobs available in other areas of the economy. The scientists further speculated that, based upon the Amish experience, it might be possible for conventional farmers to maintain their productivity, while increasing energy efficiency.

Population decentralization. Amish settlements are widely dispersed across the United States, and within settlements, individual homes are usually dispersed, alternating with houses of non-Amish residents.

Although the rural Midwest still contains the largest number of Amish settlements, rising land prices in that region are contributing to a growing exodus of young families – "pioneers" – to newly founded communities in Canada and Latin America. Letters to The Budget, the Amish newspaper, written by "scribes" – community-based lay reporters – suggest that Amish public opinion strongly favors "pioneering," with some correspondents warning against the dire (social and economic) consequences of "bunching up," that is, overpopulating a settlement area.

Freedom from consumer-oriented education. The Amish consider public high schools to be both vocationally irrelevant to their youth and destructive to their traditional values. Due to their similar dissatisfaction with consolidated public grade and junior high schools, many Old Order settlements established their own parochial schools, following a 1972 U.S. Supreme Court decision that exempted them from compulsory attendance laws beyond eighth grade.

The major goals of Amish schools are to teach basic educational skills, to transmit traditional values, and to insulate children from unacceptable outside values, such as individualism, materialism, and consumerism.

The curriculum of the parochial schools is carefully designed to exclude influences that might encourage the development of a taste for consumer goods. Texts are published for the Order by Pathway Publications and attempt to communicate acceptable moral values to students, as well as teaching them essential facts and skills. The Amish also insulate children from commercial radio, television, and magazine advertising, both at home and at school.

In general, the Amish attitude toward materialism and consumerism closely resembles that of Schumacher. Both would agree that people can never be content as long as they are constantly being encouraged to want many things, but, if people are taught to limit their wants, contentment becomes possible.

Freedom from structural unemployment. Unemployment per se is not a major problem for the Amish. A majority work on farms or in trades that service their farming communities. Others work in Amish or Mennonite-owned cottage industries or businesses, while still others work for outsiders, either as self-employed contractors or as regular employees.

These cottage industries often involve the manufacture of appropriate-technology items that are used by the Amish – and sometimes by outsiders – and may be difficult or expensive to obtain elsewhere. Cottage-industry employment has the advantage of permitting parents to remain with their children while they work, as is customary in Amish culture; it also encourages the continuation of the old tradition of "Dutch" craftsmanship.

The Services of Amish contractors and employees tend to be steadily in demand, even in recessionary periods. Their popularity is no doubt due to the lower prices and wages they charge, to their well-known commitment to the work ethic, to their deserved reputation for honesty and integrity, and especially to the high quality of their work.

One type of employment that the Amish try to avoid and accept only in cases of extreme financial need is production-line work in large industrial factories. When they do take factory jobs, the Amish are apt to work in those industries that permit some use of their traditional tradeskills, such as boat-building, furniture-making, and cheese-making. This approach is also in line with Schumacher, who once said working on a factory assembly line "rots the brains" of the workers.

While Amish society cannot presently serve as an immediate sociological blueprint for de-industrializing the vast majority of the American populace, the analogy drawn between it and Schumacher’s "frugal community" clearly demonstrates the feasibility of developing a limited number of small, conservation-centered communities within the boundaries of democratic, industrialized nations. These communities could include as members volunteers who were strongly committed to conforming to the spirit and form of a culture like that of the Amish, if not to its exact content.

Forward-looking national governments might find it in their best interests to support the establishment of such experimental conserver communities. These prototypes, if organized along the theoretical lines recommended by Schumacher and empirically demonstrated by the Amish should, by their very nature, ensure a continuity of agricultural production and small-scale manufacturing even in the event of future energy and natural resource crises.

Thomas W. Foster is a sociologist, criminologist, teacher, and author of several articles on the Old Amish, many of whom live near his home in North Central Ohio. He can be contacted at the Ohio State University at Mansfield, 1680 University Drive, Mansfield, Ohio 44906.